Week 3
ASA105
This week's theme of liberal academic perspectives has provided the killer blood minds of those who were serving in the war. In chapter two of Nick Turse’s Kill Anything that Moves, he emphasis the horrific killings the Americans have done in order to meet "quotas" set by the Pentagon. These competitions for officer corps promotions exposed the U.S trues intentions- which were never to help the Vietnamese. "The bodycount system led to 'a real incentivizing of death and it just fucked with our value system' [...] if you're telling a nineteen-year-old kid it's okay to waste people and he will be rewarded for it, what do you think that does to his psych?" the incentives that were handed to the young men psychologically turned the war into a game. It was all about the body counts. Whom the body counts came from did not matter. They slaughtered civilians, children, innocent lives and tainted evidence to justify the murders, all for "several days of fun in the sun at a beach resort, to medals, badges, extra food, extra beer, permission to wear non regulation gear, and light duty at base camp". It is quite ironic they are covering up their murders for a life they had before the war. We will never truly know the number of lives that were taken from this war. The more disheartening information that may be true is that "there are good reasons to believe that even this staggering figure may be an underestimate". The brainwashing in our military systems create bigger problems than they realize afterwards. The mindsets of doing everything for incentives, but at the end of the day for "a good cause" creates false narratives that results in a silenced painful history.
This brings to the question on how do we stop these false narratives? Erasing the narratives of what actually happens continues the cycle of the generational racism and oppression by silencing the true history. However, the liberal academic perspectives can give us a chance to rewrite the story of what actually happened.
I chose this image to represent the innocent lives of children and civilians who were killed to meet s quota
Source: Turse, Nick. Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam. 2013. New York: Metropolitan Books.
Image: https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/its-been-decades-since-the-vietnam-war-ended-and-the-smithsonian-has-never-mounted-a-full-exhibition-until-now/2019/01/30/e78e9288-1b59-11e9-88fe-f9f77a3bcb6c_story.html
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